Welcome to AdStars, an advertising festival in Busan, South Korea that desperately wants to be Cannes. The organisers are certainly doing everything they can including inviting a big name chairman of the jury like Neil French along with other creative stars (then people like me) to be judges. But they cannot bring the South of France sunshine, the arrogant waiters serving overpriced croque monsieurs or the sheer style of the Cannes sea front.

During his opening speech at an Irish bar called O’ Kims Neil French lived up to his reputation of insulting more people than Ricky Gervais with the organisers, the location and Jay-Z getting a good roasting. At the moment it is free to enter AdStars which meant that the submissions would be numerous and the quality questionable. But we were all there to help make the festival a success.

Looking at some of the digital finalists there were a few projects that have not had such high profiles at other award festivals. Let’s take a look at a few…

Directing Shadows is a website developed for Japanese sculptor Moto Waganari. His wireframe sculptures were brought to life when using a PC with webcam that followed the movements of your iPhone or a lighter.

The next project was created by a Japanese web development company One to Ten Design to showcase their abilities. Rather than just show their work they built a 3D Flash gaming engine so site visitors could battle their way to learn about the challenges faced by the agency on high-end projects.

Next up is 3D projection mapping video for Hyundai which involves a real car attached to the side of a building.

Another charming project from Taiwan was for a Dr. Milker called the Daily Life Exhibition. A team of animators would create amazing short sequences each day for 10 days based on photos and stories submitted by the public. These were shared on Facebook. Check it out here.

Finally a weird and wonderful piece of work from Japan. The younger generation were not interested in going to see the horse racing as they felt it was for older people. So an online experience was developed in a Nintendo style where people could bet on imaginary races. Each race was unique and could be shared on YouTube. Below is one of the races.

Neil left the festival early (maybe before he insulted the entire population of South Korea) but it was quite an experience being on the jury with him. Oh, and if you don’t know what the Canada reference is all about in the photo you can read about it all here.